Ah – the sweet smell of success. After last week’s negative knitting fiasco, I have actually made progress. I decided I was not satisfied with the purple lace scarf – just too much air and not enough yarn for me. So I tried this:

Much better! The exciting part about all of this (at least for me – remember, my life is pretty dull if this constitutes excitement!), is that I charted this pattern from written directions. To find a pattern, I went to this book in my library:

Take a look at the price. Yes, that’s right! I paid $1.48 for this book – eons ago and who knows where. The problem is that the patterns are not charted, they are written out. Well, I’m a charting kind of knitter. I just refuse to do lace or Aran patterns that are not charted. In fact, I have a pattern for a beautiful Celtic cardigan that I would love to have, but have been putting off because it is not charted. However, I downloaded the Knitter’s Fonts and decided to give it a go. Here is the result:

Pretty cool, huh? It was challenging at first. Although we may read left to right and top to bottom, we knit in exactly the opposite directions – right to left and bottom to top. Therefore the pattern must be charted in that direction, which means reading the pattern that way. Once I got the hang of it, though, it wasn’t too terribly hard. So far, I’ve charted six patterns and test knit one – the purple scarf. I thought this would be a really fun project – making up a lace notebook. I could test knit the patterns out of scrap lace yarn (I have loads!), then mount them on the page with the chart. It would be a nice reference and would give me the opportunity to constantly cast on a new project!! Woo hoo! Semi-guilt free, too, because I wouldn’t be taking on a large project. Sometimes I just amaze myself with my ability to rationalize. But then I remind myself – this is a hobby, for Pete’s sake. I don’t need to rationalize!